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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how much barrier they desired to keep. They selected a section on the western perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their crops; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to